“I wish you would tell me that you could not
possibly ever think of him,” said Fred.
“Never dare to mention this any more to me,
Fred,” said Mary, getting serious again.
“I don’t know whether it is more stupid
or ungenerous in you not to see that Mr. Farebrother
has left us together on purpose that we might speak
freely. I am disappointed that you should be
so blind to his delicate feeling.”
There was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother
came back with the engraving; and Fred had to return
to the drawing-room still with a jealous dread in
his heart, but yet with comforting arguments from
Mary’s words and manner. The result of
the conversation was on the whole more painful to
Mary: inevitably her attention had taken a new
attitude, and she saw the possibility of new interpretations.
She was in a position in which she seemed to herself
to be slighting Mr. Farebrother, and this, in relation
to a man who is much honored, is always dangerous
to the firmness of a grateful woman. To have
a reason for going home the next day was a relief,
for Mary earnestly desired to be always clear that
she loved Fred best. When a tender affection
has been storing itself in us through many of our
years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for
it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And
we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy
as we can over other treasures.
“Fred has lost all his other expectations; he
must keep this,” Mary said to herself, with
a smile curling her lips. It was impossible
to help fleeting visions of another kind—new
dignities and an acknowledged value of which she had
often felt the absence. But these things with
Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and looking sad for
the want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.
“For there can live no hatred
in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change:
In many’s looks the false heart’s
history
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:
But Heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell:
Whate’er thy thoughts or thy heart’s
workings be
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness
tell.”
—SHAKESPEARE:
Sonnets.
At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment
about Rosamond, she herself had never had the idea
that she should be driven to make the sort of appeal
which he foresaw. She had not yet had any anxiety
about ways and means, although her domestic life had
been expensive as well as eventful. Her baby
had been born prematurely, and all the embroidered
robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness.
This misfortune was attributed entirely to her having
persisted in going out on horseback one day when her
husband had desired her not to do so; but it must
not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion,
or rudely told him that she would do as she liked.
